Me!
I hadn’t seen it for decades. The rooftop is fantastic but the lead up is rather dull in this film. Lindsay-Hogg missed key moments of drama that are to be found in Peter Jackson’s Get Back: McCartney conjuring Get Back out of thin air, George quitting, “I wrote a song last night”, the arrival of Billy Preston, the receptionist coolly flat handing the police….
I would like the Complete Rooftop on Blu-Ray, CD, LP, please.
I have.
I found it more watchable than my memory of it. It is essential for the full performances of McCartney tunes before the rooftop session (in reality recorded the day after).
It is a fairly poorly made film though, no explanations of what is going on. Get Back’s day by day approach is superior. And leaving out Paul working on the song Get Back one of many baffling omissions.
Saw the rooftop part of Get Back in an IMAX cinema, that was amazing.
I found it a bit of light relief after the rigours of Get Back. More music here and whilst it doesn’t have the context and continuity of GB I thoroughly enjoyed it.
We’ve been spoilt… ‘eight’ hours of Get Back… better still for me was the Rooftop cinema release (which I campaigned for on this very site), and now, a pristine ‘Let It Be’. Not too much to complain about.
The thing I most missed in the original is Paul emanating from the staircase onto the roof, and looking the coolest person ever at the coolest time ever, and KNOWING he is looking the coolest person ever at the coolest time ever.
Don’t have D+ but a mate has so I’ll catch up next time I see him.
That rooftop concert! Another Fab First!
The Dead played the rooftop of the Chelsea Hotel in ’67, but there’s no recording of it.
I think you will find that this band was first….
The Originals. Respect.
Jean-Luc Godard moved to the UK soon after *lensing” the Airplane promo film. He wanted to work for the Fabs, but they turned him down. Toff Of The Realm Baronet Sir Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who’d directed the early Fabs promos, got the gig instead. It’s very improbable that the aspiring filmmaker didn’t meet the “terrible child” of New Wave cinema – they’d both be on the same arty social circuit, so it’s probable that Godard showed him the Airplane footage, and maybe the Fabs saw it too. Godard was entering his extreme political agitprop period, and perhaps the Fabs felt more comfortable with the Baronet, who went on from the Fabs to helm such movie classics as … er … and … er … anyway, his artistic paintings, proudly displayed on his website, show him to be a painter quite the equal of Bob Dylan.
Didn’t MLH go onto direct Brideshead Revisited. Not a fave of mine but widely regarded as a classic by many
Er … he directed five out of eleven, so technically a co-director. Given the running start he had in the business, it’s a bit of a mystery why he stumbled so quickly. Also – he’s Orson Welles’ bastard son. Maybe, being the privileged toff he is, he just wasn’t driven. Maybe he was too much of a lovey. Maybe anything. The point is that I’d rather listen to Surrealistic Pillow than any Beatles album.
Never has a band fallen from grace so swiftly than The Airplane. They make Rod Stewart’s career look stellar
For Stewart’s career is stellar, one of the most stellar in Rock history. He can still shift serious units sixty years on.
The point is the early records were excellent and then oh dear. But popular sure.
Not popular enough for my predictive spelling that failed to recognise ROD Stewart.
🙁
Fallen from Grace indeed who came with the brilliant White Rabbit but the rest is inferior really. A rather ugly noise.
The Stones liked his work enough to hire him for Rock and Roll Circus but not enough to release it at the time. S&G’s Concert In The Park and Simon’s Graceland are pretty good, though.
Yes, he was perfectly capable, so it is a mystery why his film-making career never really got off the ground. He was part of a very ‘sixties set that included Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg, Lindsay Anderson, Richard Lester, Peter Whitehead, Robert Freeman, and some other people whose names I can’t remember.
The New Originals, surely?
Perhaps another reason The Beatles turned down Godard was because a year earlier he had filmed The Rolling Stones in Sympathy For The Devil, a pretty chaotic movie as I recall.
I really don’t do toffs, but I definitely do Golden Age, and Lindsay-Hogg did the promos to Paperback Writer, Rain, Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Child of the Moon. I have never seen better pop music promo films done by anyone else ever, and I never will again.
I know, give him the gig!
His work on Let It Be is perfection.
I’ll just drop this here. It’s from the Season 5 episode of The Simpsons called Homer’s Barbershop Quartet. In it Homer tells the unlikely (but “true”) tale of his past as the singer of an incredibly popular band. The history of the group, The B-Sharps, parallels closely The Fab Four. Any Beatles fan should hunt it out if they haven’t seen it already. That fella in the car that says, “It’s been done” was voiced by George Harrison who was playing himself.
Lisa: “Dad! You beat Dexy’s Midnight Runners!”
Homer: “You haven’t heard the last of them!”